"In my second year of college, I had to make a difficult phone call. I'd stared at the phone for almost two hours before I actually picked it up and dialed. I was fairly calm, until I heard her voice: "Hello?"

"For me, it felt like an unexpected adventure on the high seas. I remember thinking, with my hair blowing behind me and the furry part of my parka slapping at my face as we flew in a boat over the deep, dark ocean towards the rising sun, that THIS, this is what it must have felt like to be a Viking. Only without having to row."

"From a very young age, I knew meat didn't come only in neat little plastic-wrapped packages from the grocery store—it also came in the form of a carcass suspended from its neck, tongue hanging out of its mouth, legs splayed open, bleeding out into a metal bucket."

"It's completely mind-altering weirdness, that room, no matter what music they play, no matter what visuals they project on the ceiling. You can sit in a chair that leans way back, or you can just sprawl out on the floor in front of the chairs. When we made the trip down in 2001 for Led Zeppelin, Ellen, Joyce, I, and the others laid ourselves flat out on the floor and ooh-and-aah'ed at the "world-class laser art" on the ceiling for what seemed like two lifetimes—two long, luxurious and sexy utopian eternities. THEN IT HAPPENED. I had to pee."

"Some people, non–miracle believers, refuse to swim there. Because of its unusually high mineral content, it feels like you're floating around in a lukewarm bathtub that has a little too much Johnson's Baby Oil in it. It makes your skin feel slick and slimy. Tiny bugs buzz around near the shore, where the water often deposits a bizarre foam, not unlike shampoo."

"Depending on what strikes your rawest nerve, there's a horror movie out there for every single human—a film with power so great, it can scare a little bit of the pee out of your bladder and into your pants, and make you pleased to have done so. Here are 30 of them, assigned to their ideal victims."

"Brigitte Berman’s documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel, exposes the dirty truth about the pipe-smoking, silk-jammie-wearing, party-mansion-dwelling, big-boobie-girl-dating inventor of the Playboy empire: He is actually a nice guy. A gentleman—a civilized, educated, funny, and downright noble example of a human. When I picked up the phone to ask Hef a few questions about the other side of his public persona—his social activism and forward-thinking ideals that have helped shape sexual politics throughout the 20th century—I felt like I was about to talk to a wildly famous icon."

"After running home in tears several times in junior high, I toughen up in high school. In a calculated move to hide the fact that I'm a poor white-trash farm girl, I buy a leather jacket and the toughest t-shirt I can find. I wear both every day until I get called into the principal's office. "Does that shirt really say 'Metal Up Your Ass'? Go home and change." I argue that there's nothing obscene about a sword rising out of a toilet, but I lose and walk home. This time I don't cry."

"The duo has earned two platinum and five gold albums (!!). They have a large underground following of dedicated and rabid fans known, of course, as Juggalos. I spoke with Violent J about fatherhood, cheap soda, religion, and boobs. He was extremely friendly, and made me miss the no-bullshit attitude of a born-and-bred Detroiter."